It’s been a pretty eventful few days for Kelly Olynyk.
The Celtics big man was the unexpected star of Boston’s Game 7 win over the Washington Wizards on Monday, scoring 26 points off the bench to vault the C’s into the Eastern Conference finals.
Fast forward to Game 1 of that series Wednesday at TD Garden, where Olynyk found himself trying to stop Cleveland Cavaliers superstar LeBron James — and failing miserably.
Late in the first quarter, Olynyk went out to guard James on a switch, and the four-time NBA MVP did the on-court equivalent of laughing in Olynyk’s face.
James completely turned his back on Olynyk and casually dribbled between his legs with his back still turned, paying absolutely no attention to the Celtics forward. When LeBron decided it was time to score, he did just that, effortlessly gliding past Olynyk for the easy layup.
Olynyk isn’t James’ first victim in this postseason — the Cavs star trolled Serge Ibaka during Cleveland’s sweep of the Toronto Raptors and generally has dominated everyone trying to defend him. But this must have been quite the wake-up call for a guy who was being mentioned in the same breath as John Havlicek just a few days ago.
James’ emasculation of Olynyk was just one of several lowlights for Boston, which lost 117-104 to fall into a 1-0 series hole.
Thumbnail photo via Greg M. Cooper/USA TODAY Sports Images
